NEWS
- New deputy mayor tells DCPS teachers she hopes to work ‘side by side’ [E.L. Haynes PSC mentioned]
- If charter schools are not the answer, what is the question?
- How the hardest-working principals avoid burning themselves out [KIPP DC PCS mentioned]
- High-poverty schools need better teachers, but getting them there won't be easy
- Map: Where D.C.’s Homeless Children Go to School
- Poll: Widespread misperceptions about the Common Core standards
New deputy mayor tells DCPS teachers she hopes to work ‘side by side’ [E.L. Haynes PSC mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
February 21, 2015
Jennifer Niles, the District’s new deputy mayor for education, told a group of D.C. Public School teachers Saturday that she is ready to stand “side by side” with them to improve opportunities for all students, during a conference organized by the Washington Teachers Union.
Niles kicked off the day-long event by introducing herself as someone who grew up with a passion for science and community service, who took part in a Marxist reading group while in business school and who made a career in charter schools, including founding E.L. Haynes, but is not defined only by them.
“Much of my professional life has been in charter schools, but it is not charter schools that I think are the answer,” she said. “We need to do everything we can to get to the answer, and [D.C. Public Schools] is an absolutely critical, vital, foundational component of what we need to do for kids.”
The event was pitched as an opportunity for teachers to “reclaim the promise of public education.” Elizabeth Davis, president of the union, said in her opening remarks that the current “test and punish” system — where some schools are “closed or punished” and other schools are “rewarded” — is broken.
She said the achievement gap is widening. “The status quo means success for some,” she said.
The union is advocating for the city to invest in more “community schools” that offer extra resources and comprehensive services to families to mitigate effects of poverty.
Teachers took the opportunity to advocate for other changes. One substitute teacher drew cheers from the crowd when she told the deputy mayor that the controversial IMPACT system, upon which teacher evaluations are based, should be thrown out because it's too subjective.
Another described disparities in the system by comparing his daughter’s “reward school” in Ward 3 with the “punishment” school across Rock Creek Park in Ward 4 where he works. His daughter’s school has a well-rounded curriculum and lots of enrichment during and after school, he said, while the “punishment school” where he works offers extra blocks of reading and math and test preparation at the expense of science and library and other enrichment.
Niles said that one of her priorities will be pursuing more equity across the system, “making sure that kids have rich experiences in every school.”
Another priority will be improving collaboration and coherence between traditional and charter schools. She said she would like to pursue a new school-funding formula that would pay schools based on actual enrollment year-round.
Currently, charter schools are given per-pupil funding based on an enrollment count in the fall, while traditional schools are paid according to the projected enrollment. Critics say the current system creates the wrong incentives — for public schools to inflate their projections and for charter schools to un-enroll students later in the year.
Niles also talked about pursuing more flexible paths to graduation through a “competency-based” approach, which would offer students different — and sometimes accelerated — ways to earn high school credit, so they are not always required to sit in a class for 120 hours.
She and Davis traveled to Maine with a delegation of educators and policymakers who she said wanted to learn about how the state was implementing competency-based graduation requirements.
Davis said they got to know each other while sharing a seat on the bus. “She’s very accessible,” she said.
If charter schools are not the answer, what is the question?
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
February 23, 2015
The Washington Post's Michael Alison Chandler quotes the new D.C. Deputy Mayor for Education Jennie Niles at a conference last Saturday organized by the Washington Teachers Union as saying this about the state of public education in the nation's capital:
“Much of my professional life has been in charter schools, but it is not charter schools that I think are the answer,” she said. “We need to do everything we can to get to the answer, and [D.C. Public Schools] is an absolutely critical, vital, foundational component of what we need to do for kids.”
But if charter schools are not the right response we better be sure we are making the right inquiry. The comment reminds me of the "The Wedding Song" by Peter, Paul, and Mary's Paul Stookey. He sings, "And if loving is the answer then who's the giving for? Do you believe in something that you've never seen before?"
When school choice was first introduced here almost 20 years ago most people, if they were not viciously attacking the idea, found it comical. Opponents loved to say, "You are proposing that poor people make a decision as to where their kids are to go to school. How can they responsibly do such a thing?"
Then the flood gates opened with the arrival of the first charter schools and people voted with their feet to go anywhere but to the crime ridden, dilapidated buildings vacuous of competent instruction that was DCPS at the time. Ever so slowly the quality of both the charter and traditional sectors began to rise. We may have not ever seen it before but a miracle was taking place.
This progress is now coming to a political end. When the question was "How do we do whatever we have to do to close to the achievement gap?" we got charter schools, Mayor Fenty, Michelle Rhee, the IMPACT teacher evaluation tool, shuttered under enrolled traditional school buildings, and facilities turned over to charters. But now it appears the emphasis is drastically changing.
It appears that the new question is "How do we all get along?" Watch for the closing of empty classroom buildings to be too disruptive, the IMPACT tool too subjective (this was brought up by a DCPS teacher on Saturday to loud applause by the group), and the location of charters near existing regular schools as too cannibalistic. Finally, as the first PARCC test results come in, the Common Core Standards will be seen as too hard.
I liked the first question much better.
How the hardest-working principals avoid burning themselves out [KIPP DC PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Jay Mathews
February 22, 2015
When Kristy Ochs became principal of the KIPP DC AIM Academy six years ago, she started at 7 a.m. and didn’t leave the Southeast Washington school until 8 p.m. Having taught at the public charter school since it began, she felt, as other staffers did, that her mostly low-income students’ impressive achievement levels — 30 percentage points above the city average in math and nearly 20 points above the average in reading — were worth the personal sacrifices.
When such KIPP results nationwide began to draw attention, critics predicted the network’s principals and teachers would burn out from pressure and fatigue. KIPP leaders had the same concern. Four years ago, a working group led by KIPP network co-founder Dave Levin, in partnership with organizational psychologist David Maxfield, began to overhaul how KIPP principals operated. This led school leaders such as Ochs to shorten their hours, take less work home and delegate some duties to new staff members.
Before Ochs became leader of the AIM middle school, only about half of KIPP principals nationally who started their schools at least four years earlier were still in those jobs. Levin’s group found that the ones who stayed were good at distributing leadership responsibility, setting priorities, calling on other experienced educators for advice and insisting on rest and family time. KIPP urged those habits on school leaders and the percentage of KIPP school founders still in their jobs after four years increased to 82 percent.
Both charter and traditional public school leaders are looking for ways to keep good principals happy and engaged. KIPP principals say reconciling their lives with their ambitions for their schools takes much planning and personal discipline.
The executive director of the 15 KIPP D.C. charter schools is Susan Schaeffler. She started the first KIPP DC school in 2001 and built the network while getting married and having three children. To ease workloads, she and her team have cut about an hour off what was a nine-hour school day. They have added backup help. Each principal has two vice principals rather than one. Teachers also benefit with shorter days and coaches to help them over rough spots.
Yet, Schaeffler noted: “This is still incredibly challenging work.” Like KIPP executive directors in other regions, she insists that staff make time for family and other healthy pursuits.
“I take time to renew myself through exercise and focusing on creating personal and positive memories,” said Philonda Johnson, in her sixth year as founding principal of the KIPP DC Discover Academy. “I have focused on setting fun yet challenging goals for myself, like, most recently, running my first half-marathon this past October.”
KIPP has 162 schools with 59,000 students in 20 states and the District. KIPP public affairs director Steve Mancini said KIPP President Richard Barth decided in 2010 to confine growth to areas in which KIPP schools already existed. New regional offices handled financial and logistic duties that once fell on school leaders. New talent could advance without moving to another city. Ochs said she once did much of the data analysis for her school but now focuses on key points, letting her regional office do the rest.
Ochs has two sons, ages 3 years and 3 months. She lives 45 minutes away, in Riva, Md. Except for one late day a week, she gets to school at 7:30 a.m. and leaves at 5:30. She handles calls in her car on the way home and usually manages to avoids work in the evenings. When she started the job, she would “be checking e-mail until I went to sleep,” she said, but she realizes “I was trying to do everything right away instead of choosing priorities.”
KIPP principals still have long days. But that extra time is one reason, they say, for their students learning more. Seeing so much academic growth, unusual for their schools’ neighborhoods, is more than enough to get them up and to work the next morning.
High-poverty schools need better teachers, but getting them there won't be easy
Greater Greater Education
By Natalie Wexler
February 20, 2015
DC needs to increase the number of highly qualified teachers who work in high-poverty schools. But doing that could require a fundamental change in the way DC Public Schools evaluates and supports teachers.
DCPS teachers who get high ratings are more likely to work in schools serving relatively affluent students. That's typical of school districts across the country, and the US Department of Education has given all state education agencies—including the District's—until June to come up with a plan to correct the imbalance.
Under DCPS's teacher evaluation system, called IMPACT, teachers in affluent Ward 3 get ratings that are significantly above those in lower-income Wards 7 and 8, according to a study based on data from 2010 to 2013. Another study shows that 41% of teachers in Ward 3 received IMPACT's top rating of "highly effective" in 2011-12, as compared to only 9% in Ward 8.
DCPS bases IMPACT scores on a number of factors, including classroom observations and growth in students' test scores for teachers of tested grades and subjects. Charter schools have their own methods of evaluating teachers.
DC's Office of the State Superintendent of Education is currently trying to come up with a plan to bring more highly qualified teachers to high-poverty schools, in both the charter and DCPS sectors. It's not clear how OSSE will define "highly qualified," but when it comes to DCPS teachers, IMPACT scores are likely to be a factor.
More money isn't enough
The simplest approach would be to offer teachers with high IMPACT scores more money to teach in high-poverty schools. But DCPS already does that. Highly effective teachers in those schools can get bonuses of up to $20,000, as compared to $2,000 in other schools, and their base pay is higher as well. Obviously, it hasn't worked.
One reason for that may be that teachers generally care more about their working conditions than about how much money they make, according to a report from The Education Trust. And the report says students aren't the most important factor. Instead, good teachers want a school with a strong leader and a collaborative environment. That's especially true for those in high-poverty schools.
Another problem with DCPS's approach is that to get the additional compensation, teachers have to continue to get a highly effective rating after they switch from an affluent school to a high-poverty one. And some teachers say it's a lot harder to get that rating at a high-poverty school.
That not only explains why teachers who are highly rated at affluent schools are reluctant to move to high-poverty ones. It also may explain why there are so many fewer highly rated teachers at high-poverty schools in the first place.
For one thing, part of the IMPACT score for some teachers depends on how much the teacher has increased her students' test scores in a given year. But the tests are geared to a student's grade level, and many students at high-needs schools are several grade levels behind.
If a 10th-grader comes into a teacher's class at a 5th-grade level and the teacher succeeds in bringing the student's skills up to a 6th- or 7th-grade level, the test isn't geared to capture that improvement. Neither the teacher nor the school gets credit. And there's virtually no way to bring a student up five grade levels in a single year.
"No teacher wants to go into a school where you can only be told you've failed," says David Tansey, a math teacher at Dunbar High School.
Teachers at high-needs schools, where behavior problems are more common, are also more likely to get low ratings on the classroom observation component of their IMPACT scores. Tansey recalls getting a low rating from one observer because a student cursed in class.
Tansey pointed out that the student had corrected himself, something that reflected Tansey's efforts and was a vast improvement over the student's behavior at the beginning of the year. But, he says, that made no difference to the observer.
Teachers need to motivate disengaged students
More fundamentally, Tansey says, the IMPACT approach assumes that students are intrinsically motivated to learn. That may be the case at more affluent schools, or at selective DCPS or charter schools where students or their parents have made an affirmative decision to attend. It's usually not the case at a neighborhood high-poverty school like Dunbar.
Tansey's students often have traumatic home lives and don't see the point of school. So he tries to explain how any mathematical concept he teaches will be useful in the real world. One project has kids planning out their lives, from choosing a college and a job to figuring out what kind of house they can afford. The kids love it, he says, and along the way they're using math to make calculations.
But projects like that won't do anything for Tansey's IMPACT score. "I do a project like that despite the requirements, not because of them," he says. Rather than having to hide techniques that work with disengaged students, he argues, teachers at high-poverty schools should be encouraged to share them with colleagues.
Tansey actually is rated highly effective—one of five teachers with that rating at Dunbar, he says. And he concedes that teachers who are rated highly effective are "genuinely effective." But he says there are also many genuinely effective teachers in high-needs schools who don't get the "highly effective" rating.
And, he says, there are "highly effective" teachers at affluent schools who would no longer get that rating at a high-needs school. It takes a different set of skills.
All this suggests that it doesn't make sense to simply try to lure highly rated teachers from Ward 3 to Ward 7 or 8. A better approach might be to recruit new teachers who have been specifically trained to deal with high-poverty populations, preferably through a residency program that includes a one-year apprenticeship in a high-needs school. (Disclosure: I'm chair of the DC Leadership Council of one such program, Urban Teacher Center.)
But even that won't be enough to ensure they stay. If DC wants to retain excellent teachers in its most challenging schools, administrators will need to make them feel their efforts are valued as much as those of their counterparts at more affluent schools.
Map: Where D.C.’s Homeless Children Go to School
Washington City Paper
By Sarah Anne Hughes and Zach Rausnitz
February 20, 2015
As of Jan. 18, 1,458 children identified as homeless were enrolled in D.C. public schools. An additional 1,454 homeless children were enrolled at one of the District's charter schools as of Jan. 21, according to the Office of the State Superintendent.
Below are two heat maps that visualize where those 3,158 children attend school currently, as well as where 3,933 homeless D.C. public and charter students attended school during the 2013-14 year. It should be stressed that these maps do not show where homeless students live, as both charter and DCPS students do not necessarily attend a school within their neighborhood boundary.
Visit link to see map.
Poll: Widespread misperceptions about the Common Core standards
The Washington Post
By Scott Clement and Emma Brown
February 20, 2015
Many Americans are confused about the Common Core State Standards, according to a new poll that finds widespread misperceptions that the academic standards — which cover only math and reading — extend to topics such as sex education, evolution, global warming and the American Revolution.
A 55 percent majority said the Common Core covers at least two subjects that it does not, according to the survey that Fairleigh Dickinson University conducted and funded. Misperceptions were widespread, including among both supporters and opponents of the program and peaking among those who say they are paying the most attention to the standards.
The Common Core is a set of guidelines that describe what children should learn and be able to do in math and reading from kindergarten through 12th grade. It began as a bipartisan, state-led effort and does not contain classroom curricula: States and school districts decide how to teach the skills and knowledge that the Common Core describes.
The poll findings show that advocates for the Common Core face a major public relations challenge as they seek to bolster support for the national academic standards, which have been adopted in more than 40 states but have become a target for some conservatives and many parents across the country.
“People are receiving bad information,” said Blair Mann, a spokeswoman for the Collaborative for Student Success, a pro-Common Core group that is funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which donated hundreds of millions of dollars to develop the new standards. “There are a million different Web sites that you can go to that have the ‘truth’ about the Common Core that are just perpetuating these myths.”
Mann blamed politicians such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), both of whom have presidential aspirations, for spreading misinformation for political gain.
Paul’s political action committee sent a fundraising e-mail last month criticizing the standards as “anti-American propaganda, revisionist history that ignores the faith of our Founders.” Jindal also suggested in a recent speech about Common Core that the standards address U.S. history lessons.
“What happens when American history is not the American history that you and I learned about, but rather it becomes a history of grievances, of victimhood?” Jindal said.
Asked to explain, Shannon Bates Dirmann, a spokeswoman for Jindal said: “Governor Jindal wasn’t talking about current curriculum, but what type of curriculum to expect if the federal government continues to control what our children learn from Washington. President Obama and bureaucrats in D.C. have proven over the last several years that they do not believe in American exceptionalism, and if they continue to garner control over K-12 education that view could be passed to our children.”
Paul has said he is a proponent of state and local control when it comes to educational standards.
“Common Core is a prime example of federal overreach into academic standards which have been traditionally set by the states and localities,” said Sergio Gor, a spokesman for Paul. “As educators, parents and other experts are finding out, the standards of Common Core are just the tip of the iceberg in a much larger federal education agenda. It would be dishonest to say that the Common Core State Standards do not inform curricula, textbooks and assessments. A distorted and problematic view of American history is evident in Common Core aligned textbooks and the readings it recommends and omits.”
The issue could play a role in the upcoming 2016 presidential primaries, separating candidates like Jindal, Paul and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — who recently changed from supporting Common Core to saying he has “grave concerns” about it — from Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a longtime advocate for the standards who has maintained his support for them.
Previous polls have found mixed support , with wide-ranging results depending on question wording. In this poll, which described it simply as the “new Common Core Standards initiative,” 17 percent approved while 40 percent disapproved.
A significant portion of respondents — 42 percent — offered no opinion. The wide uncertainty is unsurprising for an issue that large swaths of the public, not having children in school, has ignored. Just more than half of respondents said they’ve heard “just a little” or “nothing at all.”
But misperceptions were more common among those who said they were paying more attention. Sixty percent of those who said they have heard “a lot” about Common Core incorrectly said that the standards cover at least two of the four subjects that it does not cover. Among those who report having heard nothing about the program, only 45 percent said Common Core includes at least two such programs.
Forty-four percent of all respondents incorrectly said that the standards address sex education, and about the same share said that the standards include teachings on evolution, global warming and the American Revolution.
Fewer than one in five respondents correctly said that those subjects were not included in Common Core.
The poll found similar levels of confusion about Common Core’s content among Democrats and Republicans, supporters and opponents of the program and among people of different education levels.
No matter their level of misperceptions, more people disapprove of Common Core than approve. And even among those who have the most misperceptions, disapproval is not especially steep.
For instance, among poll respondents who incorrectly thought the standards include all four subjects tested in the poll, 36 percent disapproved of the standards, compared to 24 percent who approved.
But the impact of Common Core confusion on the program’s popularity differed across political groups. Republicans who incorrectly believed Common Core covers teaching on evolution, sex education and global warming were more apt to disapprove of the program. But among Democrats and independents, support did not grow or fall with greater levels of knowledge.
The Fairleigh Dickinson Public Mind poll was conducted Dec. 8-15 by live interviewers among a random national sample of 964 adults reached on conventional and cellular phones. The overall margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points, and is higher for results among subgroups.
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